Michael “Monty” Widenius, the creator of MySQL, has asked me, among many others, to help spread the word about an imminent decision by the European Commission on the Oracle merger with Sun.
Why should you care? Monty’s view, along with others like http://keionline.org/ec-mysql is that Oracle has much more to gain from neglecting MySQL than it has to gain from enhancing it. (A slow strangling seems most likely. Note that "just fork a GPL MySQL" is not really a viable option - see Monty's post.) Why should you act now? It seems that “Oracle has instead contacted hundreds of their big customers and asked them to write to the EC and require unconditional acceptance of the deal.” To balance this the European Commission needs to hear voices from the other side of the story. The European Commission is due to make a decision in just a couple of weeks. What should you do? Read Monty’s post at http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/12/help-saving-mysql.html and act on it, if you so choose. If you work for a company that makes use of MySQL then please make sure the relevant managers are aware of the issues. Tim.
